New Alzheimer’s drug trial showing promise

No effective treatment for Alzheimer’s is yet in sight, but better diagnostics, deeper scientific understanding and an encouraging drug trial are all leading to a positive mood, as the largest Alzheimer’s research conference of the year begins Sunday in Chicago.

“There have been plenty of disappointments, and sadly I’m an expert in those disappointments,” said Stephen Salloway, director of the Memory and Aging Program at Butler Hospital in Rhode Island and a professor of neurology at the Alpert Medical School of Brown University. “(But) I’m quite bullish and think we’re making significant progress.”

Much of the recent optimism surrounds a drug trial that will report more details at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference.

In that small trial, a drug seems to have removed a protein called amyloid, the hallmark of Alzheimer’s. All previous trials attacking amyloid, including some costing hundreds of millions of dollars, have failed in patients. The new study suggests it’s because they were given too little, too late.

“You’re going to have to move early and be very aggressive,” said Reisa Sperling, who directs the Center for Alzheimer Research and Treatment at Boston’s Brigham and Women’s Hospital.

Eighteen months after they began taking the experimental drug – called BAN2401 – patients who received the highest dose saw a dramatic drop in the amyloid in their brains, as well as signs that disease progression had slowed, according to Biogen, which is developing the drug along with Japanese company Essai. Detailed results and more recent findings are expected to be presented at the conference.